


We Could Quit This Scene

by idyll



Category: White Collar
Genre: Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyll/pseuds/idyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>El's smile is as off as her tone was the night before. Peter pulls out a packet of glossy brochures for housing plans in Virginia and points out the yards and gardens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Could Quit This Scene

**Author's Note:**

> This was previously titled "Manifest Destiny." The title came from a song of the same name by the band Guster, and this fic was written when I put iTunes on random, and wrote a song based on the title of the song that happened to come on. However, since this fic was written/posted, I realized that using the title was problematic due to the history and context of the concept, which was used to extend territory in the US in the early 19th century.
> 
> As such, I've changed the name of the fic to address this issue.

Hughes tells Peter about the promotion at the end of day on a Friday. Peter tells El as soon as he walks in the door, never mind that she's busy scraping another meal into the disposal.

When he sets her on her feet, after spinning her around the small kitchen, she puts the plate on the counter. Peter's grinning so hard his face feels like it's going to split in two, and he notices the hesitation before El says, "That's great, you deserve it," in a tone that's just a degree _off_.

*

At lunch on Saturday, El says, "I'm trying to figure out what to do about my business."

There's an underlying layer to her words that saves Peter from speaking when he first opens his mouth. He's glad for that, because he knows El wouldn't appreciate him bringing up the pay increase, and how she'd be able to spend her days seeking out the best foie gras in D.C. for herself rather than for a client.

"You're amazing, El," he says instead. "You could expand on word of mouth alone. Think of all the events at all those museums and monuments!"

El's smile is as off as her tone was the night before. Peter pulls out a packet of glossy brochures for housing plans in Virginia and points out the yards and gardens.

*

Sometime after midnight, when they're laying in bed with the lights out, El whispers, "What about Neal? Peter, what about _Neal_?" and Peter pretends so hard to be asleep that, by the time he wakes up, he convinces himself he was.

*

When Peter comes back from giving Satchmo a mid-afternoon walk on Sunday, El is standing in the living room. Her arms are folded under her breasts and there's a line between her brows.

"Peter."

Peter unclips Satchmo's leash and hangs it by the door. "People wait their whole lives for a chance like this. _We've_ waited ten years."

They used to talk about it a lot, back when Peter was a junior agent, El was a junior executive, and fancy dinners meant they made their macaroni and cheese with cheese-like sauce, not powder.

They've come a long way since then. Peter's worked his way upwards and made a name for himself in the Bureau, and El left the career path that was causing her to chew antacids like they were Tic Tacs and took to event planning and entrepreneurship like gangbusters.

When El makes dinner, Peter pulls out the crystal and China, and has El go upstairs to put on one of the many designer, tailored outfits she owns and a pair of those outrageously expensive shoes she loves so much.

Peter doesn't care about the material of their dish- and drinkware, or the names on the labels of El's clothes, but he knows that she enjoys the finer things that Peter will never be able to appreciate, and she deserves them.

"You'll see," he tells her. "It'll be like we always talked about."

*

After dinner, El changes into a pair of worn, ratty jeans, and one of Peter's old college sweatshirts. She leaves the dinner remnants to dry in crusty layers on the China, and the wine to go stale in the crystal, and turns out all of the lights in the living room.

She presses Peter into the sofa and shoves the brochures to the floor, where Satchmo steps all over them. She straddles his lap and frames his face between the palms of her small but strong hands, and won't let him look away.

"If we were still eating shells and cheese out of a pot with plastic forks, I wouldn't care." Peter tries to talk, but she smiles and tightens her hands so that he can't move his jaw. "I've given you room to figure this out, but you're being particularly dense."

Peter winces, because he thought he was being particularly insightful for once in his life. The look on El's face is exasperated, fond and wry all at once, like she knows exactly what Peter's thinking and finds it charming and exceedingly stupid all at once.

"Life changes, Peter. We grow up and our priorities change, and it's okay. Do you hear me? I'm not ticking off the moments until the things we talked about way back when come true." She shakes Peter's face slightly and then leans her forehead against his. "I'm happy with what we have, with where we are. Stop trying to give me things I don't want anymore."

"El," he says when the unrelenting pressure of her hands lets up. She kisses the corner of his mouth and waits him out. "I don't want you to wake up one day and wonder how the hell you let me talk you into this life. It would--it would kill me to do that to you, El."

She sits back on his lap and bites her lip. "Oh, honey. It's so _cute_ that you think you can talk me into something I don't want."

When she actually pinches his cheek and laughs at him, Peter gives up the ghost of the poor, twenty-something upstarts they used to be.

*

On Monday, Peter tells Hughes he's happy where he is, but thanks for thinking of him.

*

On Tuesday, Neal comes home with him for dinner and bemoans the scratches on the China.

When Peter explains how he got Saturday's crusty dinner remnants off the plates, Neal looks at El with appalled resignation.

She sighs and pats Peter's ass. "He was trying to help."

Neal takes Peter's arm. "Peter. Peter, you don't take _steel wool_ to fine China. It's like taking sandpaper to glass, okay?"

Peter leaves them in the kitchen, Neal worrying over the plates and contemplating asking June what dishware might be gathering dust in her cavernous attic, and El talking dreamily of a set she saw at a client's mansion, "Oh, it was gorgeous, Neal, you would have cried!"

Outside, Satchmo takes forever to do his business and drags Peter through a mud puddle on the way back.

*

Peter wakes up in the middle of the night to an empty bed that smells of the familiar combination of El's perfume and Neal's cologne. He follows the giggling downstairs and finds them in the kitchen. El's wearing Neal's shirt, which gapes at her chest due to the way she's left the first three buttons undone. Neal is in a pair of silk boxers that Peter swears have to be altered, even though Neal says even he doesn't take tailoring that far. They both have the most ridiculous bedhead that Peter has ever seen.

Neal is feeding El one of the outrageously expensive pastries that she brought home for dessert, and her face dissolves into orgasmic lines when it hits her tongue. Neal watches her with a small, genuine smile. He catches her hand and places a kiss on her wrist before letting her return the favor.

Peter feels warm and contented, and leaves without interrupting them.

*

An hour before the alarm goes off, Peter is already awake. Neal is in the center of the bed, his cheek tucked against Peter's shoulder. El is using Neal's chest as a pillow, one hand stretched across him to rest against Peter's ribs.

A few minutes of staring later, El opens her eyes and blinks at Peter before smiling sleepily. Peter takes her hand, twines their fingers together, and rests them on Neal's chest.

"He would have come with us," Peters whispers. It's a surprise to him, since this thing with Neal, this unexpected and insane thing, is part of what he was trying to make up to her. But he means it. He would have called in every favor he had, kissed every ass in sight, and put himself in debt to anyone that would take a marker from him to make it happen.

El's eyes crinkle and her smile is full of old knowledge that's new to Peter, and probably still incomplete for him. "He'd tell you the same thing I did."

She's wrong. Peter remembers the look on Neal's face, and the weight in his words, when he told Peter about the meaning of that empty bottle. Neal's not like El in that way.

*

Neal catches sight of the shiny brochure paper sticking out from under the couch at breakfast. Quicksilver emotions pass over his face when he picks it up and realizes what it means. El is upstairs getting dressed, and Peter curses both the timing and Neal's ability to put together a whole picture from a single piece.

Neal looks at him with a carefully constructed expression that Peter finds infuriating. "Peter?"

"It's nothing."

El comes down then, and stops in the doorway when she sees the brochure in Neal's hand. Peter looks at her, pleading, but she shakes her head. Neal doesn't look away from Peter.

"They made an offer, and I turned it down. Nothing to tell."

There's a world of frustration in Neal's voice when he says, "_Peter_."

Peter tosses up his hands. "What? What do you want me to say? I turned it down, it's a non-issue."

Neal makes a noise and glares at him. "Not if you turned it down because of--" He makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses Peter, El, the house, his anklet, and himself. "--this. We all agreed, Peter. We agreed that if this even seemed like it was going to cost you something that we would stop. Did you think I'd go back on that?"

Peter stares at him, horrified and angry. "You idiot, I was going to say yes _because of this_."

Neal's eyes go wide and startled. El smiles proudly at Peter, like he finally figured out the most obvious thing in the existence of ever. Peter thinks about what he just said and--_oh._ Maybe he did.

Peter likes boxed donuts from the grocery store, and he actually really misses the macaroni and cheese of his and El's early days. He doesn't think there's a chance in hell of dishware ever making him cry, and he suspects that Neal's boxers cost more than one of his suits.

"I hate DC," Peter says loudly. "The thought of working there makes me want to throw myself in front of a truck. I hate politicking, shmoozing and socializing with a capital S. And I hate that you can't live in the city, because I _also_ hate McMansion housing plans, yardwork, and keeping up with the Joneses!"

El moves to Neal's side and takes the brochure from his lax fingers. She rubs a hand down his side, like she's calming a spooked horse, which is ridiculous because Peter's the one yelling. But Neal's shaking, Peter notices, even with El's soothing touch.

"Neal," he says, helpless. "Neal, come on. Don't. It's okay."

"I--" Neal clears his throat. "How can you say that, Peter? This is so far from okay. You were going to--"

Peter doesn't even need El's pointed look to start moving. He pulls Neal to his chest and holds him there tightly. "Christ, Neal." He meets El's eyes over Neal's head and gets it, finally. "Trust me, it's better than okay."

*

Peter is woken by whispered voices talking across his chest. He gropes blearily and pats at El and Neal's messy bedheads, and as he's drifting back to sleep Neal breathes, right in his ear, "I'm okay where I am, Peter."

.End


End file.
